Local Paper Brand Reactions

Rich Hoffman's outlook on the rest of this season is a little more bleak than mine, but he makes some great points about the limbo this franchise will now live in over the summer.

In the offseason, they are going to have to decide if DiLeo is still going to be their coach. All without Elton.

They are going to have to continue with their drafting and tweaking and roster massaging, trying to imagine what might be. All without Elton.

Then will come training camp; hello, Elton. Then will come the beginning of the understanding, finally.

Bob Ford goes the wishy-washy good news, bad news approach. Let's focus on the good.

It could be that, in the long run, additional minutes for Speights, Young and - with Iguodala playing small forward almost exclusively - Williams will pay off when Brand does finally return. If Brand comes back fully healthy next season and with some of his old mobility back as well, that added maturity for the kids will allow them to complement the power forward's play rather than merely contrast with it.

Kate Fagan has a story about how the Sixers gambled and lost by bringing Brand back. I don't really agree. It's a gamble if you have something to lose. Trying to come back and play didn't exacerbate the injury, and it didn't make his recovery time any longer. No matter when he had the surgery, he was going to miss the rest of the season.

Luckily, she followed up the story with a redeeming blog post about what she thinks they need to do to make it work with the current guys.

Phil Jasner wrote a straight news story with quotes from Brand and his agent. Apparently, this didn't warrant a blog post and an opinion from the hardest working...well. From Jasner.

And finally, the resident dickhead at the Inquirer, John Gonzalez, decided that even though he obviously hasn't watched a full Sixers game all season, he should chime in. Here's my favorite quote from his latest hatchet job.

But as far as PR potholes go, that was tiny compared with the giant crater Brand created when he decided to call out sick for the rest of the season.

So the guy fights the doctors to get back on the court, plays his ass off with a debilitating injury and this jackass calls him a malingerer for it? Man, if he ever had to, you know, actually talk to an athlete, or do any kind of journalistic work besides sitting behind a desk and spouting off about things he knows nothing about, he'd be in trouble. Good to know there's a new Stephen A. Smith in town. Wonder if he sent this story in from his BlackBerry.